A media player may output moving images to a display device. For example, a media player might retrieve locally stored image information or receive a stream of image information from a media server (e.g., a content provider might transmit a stream that includes high-definition image frames to a television, a set-top box, or a digital video recorder through a cable or satellite network). In some cases, the image information is encoded to reduce the amount of data used to represent the image. For example, an image might be divided into smaller image portions, such as macroblocks, so that information encoded with respect to one image portion does not need to be repeated with respect to another image portion (e.g., because neighboring image portions may frequently have similar color and brightness characteristics).
As a result, the media player may decode encoded image information before it is presented via the display device. Moreover, in some cases the media player may also scale one or more image streams before it is presented. For example, a second image stream may be reduced in size and then be overlaid on a first image stream (e.g., to create a picture-within-a-picture effect). The bandwidth and/or processing needed to scale a decoded image stream, however, can make such a feature difficult to implement.